Heathers

Heathers is a 1989 film starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, and Shannen Doherty. Basically, the movie revolves around four best friends (three of which are named Heather) that are wrapped up in the world of malicious adolescent extremes. The movie is considered to be a black comedy, and simply stating has issues that directly deal with manipulation, sex, scandal, and even murder. Basically, it takes the idea of high school drama, and pushes the envelope to extreme measures. The movie takes ideas of "mean-spirited" attributes to a new high--achieving the most dominate of social hierarchy by utilizing sex appeal, peer pressure , the prominent desire (stemming from outsiders) to be accepted by the "popular" kids. With controversy and domination the plot line, the movie ends up taking a turn towards the demented side with the coaxing of an "accidental" killing; therefore spurring a slew of repeated mimics of suicide attempts, etc--all for the price of being "accepted." It seems like this "acceptance" policy is something that is a running theme in many teen movies. This need for social praise seen in Heathers, seems to be directly correlated to a newer movie which portrays the manipulative qualities of "four" best friends: Mean Girls.

The "cat-like" qualities girls invoke can be compared in these two clips from each movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ-3rikUQ34

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxf3RZ-3GD8

My innate reaction was to think that Mean Girls is the Heathers of my generation. Granted, because Mean Girls is directed towards more a "kid-friendly" crowd, it still employs the psychological manipulation and constant striving for social acceptance many adolescent-based films incorporate. But frankly, what was the most disturbing was to see Heathers take the domination to the extreme, which interestingly enough, made it that much better of a movie--there was always a way to "one-up" the influential reasonings the popular crowd had, and a shift in ethically acceptable lies to unsound righteousness for murder.